DC court slams Texas GOP’s legal arguments on redistricting

This is how the federal judges redrew Bexar County's congressional lines. (Texas GOP's lines in red.)

In a key pretrial order, a panel of federal judges in Washington found that the state of Texas used an inappropriate standard to determine if districts would be able to elect minority candidates and said that the state’s lawyers had confused and misapplied Supreme Court precedent and the Voting Rights Act in a bid to make their case.

The judges’ 44 page opinion, issued late Thursday night, expounds upon the court’s previously brief finding that the state had used an improper standard to determine if minority voters would be disenfranchised by the Legislature’s plans and could complicate Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s efforts to get the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn court-drawn interim redistricting maps.

The preclearance trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 17.

The three judges — two appointed by Republican President George W. Bush and one appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama — wrote that the state confused two key Voting Rights Act legal standards in arguing that the court should grant preclearance.

“Texas perceives “ability” and “opportunity” as interchangeable, but they represent different concepts that serve different purposes,” the judges wrote in their order.

They also found that standard used by the state to determine if a district could elect a minority candidate was overly simplistic.